One of the more important Finnish aircraft of the winter war with Russia in 1939/40 was the Fokker D.XXI. An aircraft that was easy to maintain, gave acceptable performance and was sufficiently armed to deal with Russian aircraft. Initially developed in the Netherlands for the Dutch East Indies, it was successfully sold to both Finland and Denmark, though the Finns managed to get the most use out of them.

This decal sheet fro inScale 72 is quite comprehensive and includes markings for 14 aircraft. Now you can't do all 14 planes from this sheet as there are insufficient roundels, however, there are enough codes and tail letters for all of them. There is also a small section of stencils for one plane. Most D.XXIs were pretty well devoid of stencils, so this should not be a problem.

What may be a problem is finding a kit for it. There are basically two injected kits of this aircraft. One by Frog and the other by Pioneer. There really is little to choose between the two as I believe the Pioneer is just a copy of the Frog kit. However, I do think that the Frog offering is the only one of the two that has skis. If you readers know differently, please let me know.

In order to do a proper Finnish D.XXI there are a number of modifications that will need to be made. First of all, the Finnish version has more transparencies. It also has the small 'bumps' on the cowling that cover the rocker arms that need to be added. Finally, the rudder on the Finnish version is larger. None of these is insurmountable, though the extra clear bits may be the most work. 

Alright, enough of the small talk, let's look what is on the sheet. Well, since there are mostly just code and tail numbers, the sheet itself isn't very big. The decals are well printed and are matte. I have used a few inScale decals and they do work quite well, but are a bit brittle so you need to handle them carefully. 

Rather than list each aircraft, especially since they are so similar, I have put images of them all up for you to see. They are in either the overall olive green with light grey undersides or the black and olive green upper scheme. After 1942 the light grey became a light blue grey. After joining the Axis, aircraft had yellow on a fuselage band, under the wing tips and covering the cowling. The first page lists aircraft if Llev 12, 14, and 32. The view lower has all aircraft from Llev 24

If you like Finnish aircraft and can handle the modifications to the kits, then this is the decal sheet to get.

Review copy courtesy of me and my wallet!!!

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